" he said,
kindly. "Won't you come up and hear me?"

"Yes, sir," he said, and his lips parted as though he wanted to say
something else, but Raines did not notice.

"I wished I had axed him," he said, watching the preacher ride away.
"Uncle Gabe knows might' nigh ever'thing, 'n' he says so. Crump said
the rider said so; but Crump might 'a' been lyin'. He 'most al'ays is. I
wished I had axed him."

Mechanically the lad walked along the millrace, which was made of hewn
boards and hollow logs. In every crevice grass hung in thick bunches to
the ground or tipped wiry blades over the running water. Tightening
a prop where some silvery jet was getting too large, he lifted the
tail-gate a trifle and lay down again on the platform near the old
wheel. Out in the mill-pond the water would break now and then into
ripples about some unwary moth, and the white belly of a fish would
flash from the surface. It was the only sharp accent on the air. The
chant of the katydids had become a chorus, and the hush of darkness
was settling over the steady flow of water and the low drone of the
millstones.

"I hain't afeerd," he kept saying to himself. "I hain't afeerd o'
nothin' nor nobody;" but he lay brooding until his head throbbed, until
darkness filled the narrow gorge, and the strip of dark blue up through
the trees was pointed with faint stars. He was troubled when he rose,
and climbed on Rome's horse and rode homeward--so troubled that he
turned finally and started back in a gallop for Hazlan.

It was almost as Crump had said. There was no church in Hazlan, and, as
in Breathitt, the people had to follow Raines outside the town, and he
preached from the roadside. The rider's Master never had a tabernacle
more simple: overhead the stars and a low moon; close about, the trees
still and heavy with summer; a pine torch over his head like a yellow
plume; two tallow dips hung to a beech on one side, and flicking to the
other the shadows of the people who sat under them. A few Marcums and
Braytons were there, one faction shadowed on Raines's right, one on
his left. Between them the rider stood straight, and prayed as though
talking with some one among the stars. Behind him the voice of the woman
at her tiny organ rose among the leaves. And then he spoke as he had
prayed; and from the first they listened like children, while in their
own homely speech he went on to tell them, just as he would have told
children, a story that some of them